In the 5th session of Chandoo.org podcast, we are going to demystify form controls.
I am very happy and excited to interview my good friend, fellow Excel MVP, author, blogger and virtual mentor – Debra Dalgleish about this topic.
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What is in this session?
In this session we are going to explore form controls, a powerful feature of Excel that makes your workbooks interactive. Debra is a world famous expert on all topics of Excel (especially data validation, pivot tables & form controls) and this session is very entertaining, informative and practical.
In this podcast Debra mentions about her User forms training kit. I highly recommend this product for anyone hoping to learn user forms, data entry forms and form controls. As our podcast listener, if you choose to purchase this training kit, you get
- 20% discount on Debra’s User Form Training kit (if you buy before April 30th, 2014)
- Special bonus from me: 14 page guide & practice workbook on form controls
Listen to the podcast to know how to get these.
In this podcast, you will learn,
- What are form controls
- When you would use them?
- Example form control – Combo box
- How form controls differ from active-x controls
- How to enable form controls in your Excel?
- Various important form controls
- Combo box
- Command Button
- Radio Button
- Check box
- Scroll bar & Spin button
- List box
- Compatibility of form controls between various version of Excel
- Comparison of form controls with other types of interactive features in Excel
- Slicers
- Hyper links
- VBA
- Debra’s favorite form control tip
- Special bonus & how to obtain it
Go ahead and listen to the show
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Links & Resources mentioned in this session:
Debra’s website – Contextures.com
Books mentioned:
Courses mentioned:
- Excel School online training program
- VBA Classes online training program
- Debra’s User forms training kit
Articles & Discussion on Form controls
- Enabling Developer Toolbar & Form controls in Excel
- Multiple Selection thru Data validation
- Dependent Data Validation (Cascading Data Validation)
- Dependent Data Validation [contextures.com]
- Multi-selection list boxes – how to use them?
Other types of interactive features in Excel
- Introduction to hyperlinks
- Slicers – how to use them – case study
- Making your dashboards & reports interactive – detailed guide
Recommended Resource – Debra’s User Form Training Kit
If you wish to learn more about user forms, form controls and how they can simplify life for your workbook users, then please consider purchasing Debra’s User Form training kit. It is an eBook + Excel workbook combo that works very well and helps you understand these advanced concepts very easily.
Note: You get 20% discount on this if you buy before 30th of April. Listen to podcast for details.
Note about links: The links to various books & Debra’s training kit are affiliate links. It means when you click on them & purchase, Chandoo.org receives some commission. I recommend these books because I genuinely love them. I would have recommended even if there is no benefit to me.
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF]
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Do you use form controls?
I use them in almost all my dashboards. They are really easy to set up and use. I also love slicers, hyperlinks, little bit of VBA and any other type of interactive features Excel supports.
What about you? Do you use form controls? What is your experience like? Please share using comments.
13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”
To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales). Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it. ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format. Much easier in my opinion.
David
Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.
David, I was just about to post the same!
In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
Rgds,
Chandoo,
If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :
=IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.
JMarc
If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
Regards
I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
Change the helper column to:
=IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.
Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
Cheers
@Kevin.. You are welcome. To insert a combo box, go to Developer ribbon > Insert > form controls > combo box.
For more on various form controls and how to use them, please read this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/30/form-controls/
Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious? I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
Thanks again
worked it out thanks...
when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated
Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.
Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula
=2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)
will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.
Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):
=RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)
[…] Finding non-performing customers using Pivot Tables […]